PICTURE this story. A 10-year-old girl is rescued from an abusive home. A relative, desperate for help, photographs the child in her torn school uniform. The relative tearfully narrates how the child needs help. This appeal is posted in a community WhatsApp group with a phone number for sending assistance. Within an hour, the appeal has been forwarded to church groups and neighbourhood chats. By evening it is on Facebook. By the weekend, a stranger has reposted it on TikTok. The child’s name, her school, her village and the intimate details of what was done to her are now in the public domain. No one thinks about how this may affect a 10-year-old. No one asks for her consent. All is seemingly done, in “her best interests”. The people who read, watched or shared her story may forget her in a week or two, but will the internet forget?
This story is fictional, but versions of it play out daily on our phones and computers. Photographs and videos of children are shared on WhatsApp, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and X, to seek help, report a missing child, raise awareness about abuse or draw attention to a court case. The intentions are often noble. But good intentions do not make a publication lawful; they certainly do not make it harmless. Every child whose image we share could suffer the consequences.
What the law says
Zimbabwe’s laws give clear direction on this aspect. Some children’s identities must not be published at all. Section 195 of the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act [Chapter 9:07] prohibits publishing the identity of even a child under trial; “(1) No person shall at any time publish by radio or television or in any document produced by printing or any other method of multiplication, the name, address, school or place of occupation or any other information likely to reveal the identity of any person under the age of 18 years who is being or has been tried in any court on a charge of having committed any offence:” The law is clear here. In the same light, Section 196 protects complainants and witnesses from identity publication, be they minors or adults. Contravention is a punishable criminal offence.
Additionally, section 5(5) of the Children’s Act extends the same protection to any child involved in children’s court proceedings.
Notice what the law prohibits: not merely the child’s name, but any information likely to reveal his or her identity. A person may carefully omit a name and still expose a child completely; through a visible face, a recognisable uniform, the school’s name, a shot of the family home or the names of parents and teachers. Anonymity is not achieved by deleting a name from a caption. The real question is simple: can someone identify this child from what has been published? If yes, the protection the law intended has been defeated.
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The risks of oversharing
Protection matters because children cannot protect themselves. A child does not grasp what it means for their photograph to circulate through hundreds of WhatsApp groups or that an image posted today may resurface at a job interview in 15 years. The law therefore places the duty of protection on adults. Publicity also compounds trauma. A child who has survived sexual abuse or appeared in court is already wounded. Public identification invites gossip, ridicule and/or exclusion, especially in close-knit communities and on social media. No child should grow up publicly known as “the child who was abused” or “the child who was arrested”.
Also remember that the internet does not forget. The harm is a permanent digital footprint that the child did not choose. Further exposure can also create fresh danger. A single photograph may reveal where a child lives or learns. This is information that traffickers and predators can exploit. Even for a missing child, information must be shared responsibly and in coordination with the authorities. Urgency is not a licence for recklessness. Finally, exposure silences other children. If reporting abuse means becoming a social media spectacle, children will stay silent. Confidentiality makes disclosure and therefore justice possible. We can expose wrongdoing without exposing children.
Awareness without identification
None of this is an argument for silence. Society must talk about child abuse, child marriage, trafficking and juvenile justice. But awareness does not require exposing an individual child. We can discuss abuse without publishing a victim’s photograph, advocate for justice without naming a child complainant and report a court case without identifying a juvenile accused. And “someone else posted it first” is no defence at all. An unlawful publication does not become lawful because it has been copied a thousand times.
Practical tips for sharing without exposing children
Pause before you post. Ask yourself, “could anyone identify this child from what I am about to share?” If yes, do not post it.
Hide the face. Blur, crop it out or photograph children from behind when illustrating a story or campaign.
Remove identifying details including names, school uniforms and badges, school names or parents’, relatives’ or teachers’ names.
Never share images of children involved in court cases, abuse investigations or children’s court proceedings. This is a criminal offence. Tell the story without exposing the child.
For missing children, share only information approved by the police or responsible authorities and delete the appeal once the child is found.
Refuse to forward a child’s image that lands in your group chat. Break the chain. Declining to forward a child’s image is itself an act of child protection and where content is unlawful, report it. A child’s image is not content. Children deserve to grow free of a digital identity that stereotypes them.